On Saturday 2nd November, the Working Class Movement Library is hosting the now annual Engels Lecture for the first time, and the subject will be Willi Münzenberg, delivered by John Green who has written a biography of Engels and has just completed a new biography of Willi Münzenberg.
A close friend of Lenin, Trotsky and Rosa Luxemburg, Willi Münzenberg became one of the key figures in the European socialist movement during the inter-war years. He pioneered the development of global solidarity, and was a foremost leader of the European anti-war movement, a vehement anti-fascist and initiator of the first worldwide anti-colonialist and anti-imperialist organisation.
After the signing of the Soviet-German non-aggression pact in 1939, he became an outspoken opponent of Stalin. In exile in France, he was interned just before the Nazis invaded in 1940, but escaped before being later found dead in woodland close to the Swiss border after apparently hanging himself, although the mysterious circumstances surrounding his death are still the subject of speculation. Since then Münzenberg became a disappeared person in official communist histories, and has been largely forgotten in the West but is seen as a giant of the working class movement.
The talk by John Green will look at Münzenberg's life and examine the contribution he made to the socialist movement, and argue that he and his achievements should be better known and celebrated.
The Engels Lecture by John Green
Willi Münzenberg
Saturday 2nd November 2pm free
Working Class Movement Library
Main graphic Engels by Matt Carroll (commissioned by the Salford Star)
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